Classical music

[Wrightfan]

Anyone here listen to the old style of music?  I got the Time Life Anthology for my Ipod some time ago and here are some of my favorite pieces on it:
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto In B Flat Minor - Allegro Non Troppo (One of my favorite pieces)
J.S. Bach: Overture, Suite #2 - Menuett & Badinerie
J. Strauss, Jr.: Thunder & Lightning
Mozart: Rondo Alla Turca
J.S. Bach: Air
Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream - Dance Of The Clowns
Bolero-Ravel
Among others

What are your favorite pieces?

[the captain]

I'm not being an asshole here, but I don't think someone can "like classical music" any more than he can "like rock 'n' roll." There are centuries of what is usually called "classical" music that are far more different from one another than, say, Metallica is from Buddy Holly. But that anal diatribe aside, yeah. I love a lot of Stravinsky and Mozart. I tend to like late classical and romantic eras most and am not a fan at all of baroque or pre-functional tonality at all. For me, the 20th century is interesting but not always enjoyable. (The aforementioned Stravinsky is an exception: I adore him.) Schoenberg can excite me, but a lot of things of the last century strike me as great theoretical exercises that aren't really very fun to listen to. That said, anything too easy to listen to may as well not exist, either. It's all about controlled tension.

[Jason]

Hildegard of Bingen.

End thread. kthnxbye

[the captain]

End thread.

This is among my biggest pet peeves, right up there with spouting Beach-Boy cliches, overuse of ellipses and there/they're/their issues. FYI. And look, the thread didn't end!

[the captain]

I'm listening (for the first time in a few years, actually) to Schonberg's "Verklarte Nacht" right now. It's an entirely uncomfortable piece of music. Gorgeous and really, really creepy.

[Jason]

End thread.

This is among my biggest pet peeves, right up there with spouting Beach-Boy cliches, overuse of ellipses and there/they're/their issues. FYI. And look, the thread didn't end!

I'm sowwy Wuther. Pwease forgive me. I'm sorry that Brian's always right...and that the Beach Boys and they're phony-baloney money grubbing is too much for there brains to take. Their are bigger issues at hand.

FYI, don't take it personally.

Oh yeah, one more thing.

3ND THR34D.

[the captain]

Don't make me come over there. (More on topic, Schumann's Humoreske op 20 playing here.)

[Jason]

Don't make me come over there. (More on topic, Schumann's Humoreske op 20 playing here.)

 

All in good fun man.

Did you ever listen to any of his wife Clara's piano works?

[the captain]

I assumed it was (in good fun. If not, wow, this would be one pathetically lame spat). And to answer the question, actually, no. I've only just begun picking up some of his stuff, having heard it here and there in my school days mostly, but never really digging in. (Romantics tended to annoy me in those days. Wait, they still do--see all my bitching about people's irrational insertions of "magic" into music.) I picked up a 4-disc set of his piano works a couple of weeks ago, but that's it for my Schumann family collection.

[Jason]

Naxos has a CD of Clara Schumann's piano works, you can get it in most places for about $9. Her Romance in A Minor is melancholic like a Chopin, but somehow manages to make an A minor key sound even more minor than D minor, the saddest of all keys.

I'm a big fan of romantics, but I enjoy some baroques and a lot of medievals. John Dowland and Hildegard are two favorite medievals. Also lots of British consort/keyboard music from the 1500s, like Byrd and Tallis.

[the captain]

Well, it seems we're diametrically opposed in our tastes. Meaning, of course, that we'll have to solve this with a good, old-fashioned tug o' war!

[Jason]

Baroques are the ones really worth the effort, especially for those who enjoy a lot of technical heavy metal, which takes some appreciation and/or understanding of baroque styles to "get". In a weird way, and I know it sounds way off, but a lot of technical metal (yes, even the extreme stuff) takes cues from baroque and romantic styles. Of course everyone knows how Tony Iommi reintroduced the tritone to a pop audience after it had been used inconsistently from the days of Holst after years of a church ban. There's definitely a lineage from baroques to romantics to proto-metal like Black Sabbath onwards to modern technical metal.

[the captain]

Oh, there is no question that a lot of the more technical metal is directly taken from baroque and classical period music. None at all, and anyone who says otherwise is either uneducated on one or both musics or an idiot. (Granted, I don't like metal, either!) Another interesting aspect is the technical one: like writing in functional counterpoint, writing and recording metal requires a good understanding of arranging or you'll lose lines in the mix. (Of course it wasn't being recorded in the 1600s, but the idea remains the same.) There is also just the bombastic theatricality of it all that's in common, mythical/mystical themes, etc.

[Jason]

Absolutely. Not to derail TOO much, but all you've mentioned catch my attention in metal. It may be "noise" but there is definitely some musical knowledge in even the most brutal of metal bands - I can think of one special example, the band Emperor from Norway. First album is half Wagner, half Iron Maiden, all technical. Keyboards in a romantic style, dual guitar lines in a baroque style (tremelo picked but using similar ideas developed during the baroque period), and the bombastic themes of the music, which takes cues from romantics like Wagner.

I don't know if metal is a sort of "classical" music, but there is definitely a classical influence, and a folk influence. But folk was at one point considered a medieval music, so...

[the captain]

Well, classical music is a false definition as it is generally understood. There is no single kind of music that encompasses Palestrina, JS Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Wagner, Strauss, Stravinsky, Bartok and Glass. The primary thing that leads someone to call a kind of music "classical" tends to be orchestral instruments and suits, but the instruments of the orchestra changed over time and of course the suits are a later addition! There has always been high culture, middlebrow and low culture. And there have always been crossovers. There is nothing strange in a Scandinavian metal band taking aspects of music that has come before them. It doesn't make them more "classical," or some kind of crossover. (Ooooh, Beatles by the Boston Pops! They're so CLASSICAL now!) Anyone in any genre who has studied or picked up a type of music will incorporate some aspects of it if it was attractive.

[Jason]

That's the main point about "classical music". "Classical music" is a blanket term. It's not a genre unless you capitalize the C in Classical, at which point you get the music in 1750-1800, roughly.

And the high, middlebrow, and low cultures were definitely the thing that made the music a "pop culture" of the day. People think that this so-called "classical" is all high culture nowadays, with all the nicely packaged players performing it in concert halls every day. Back in the day, Don Carlo Gesualdo composed madrigals in between murdering his adulterous wife and her lover. Paganini was thought to be sent by Satan as no-one could believe how fast he could play. And of course Debussy's life was a bad Hollywood biopic before the term existed.

[the captain]

That's kind of my point: the blanket term doesn't define ANYTHING. It's not even a broadly definable style. It's not anything at all. Imagine: "I call all music that happened from 1850 through yesterday 'Musicalia.'" Robert Johnson, Cecil Taylor, Michael Bolton, Stephen Foster, Whitesnake, Dominick Argento, Richard Rodgers, Yngwie Malmsteen and Prince are all Musicalia. And me, I never did get into Musicalia: it's OK to sleep to or as background, but it's not really any fun, you know?"

[Wirestone]

Fantastic thread.

For what it's worth, I tend to define "classical music" as more a set of performance and audience behaviors than any actual style.

That is, CM involves notation (99 percent of the time, cadenzas and avant garde improvisational interludes notwithstanding) of pieces and professionally trained interpreters of said notated pieces. The pieces are also generally longer in duration and presented in a somewhat more formal style.

What does any of that have to do with the actual substance of the music presented? Not that much, although you do have to set aside more time to listen to a symphony than a pop song.

I do think the notion of classical as some monolithic, "cultured" thing turns people away from some wonderful, profound experiences.

[the captain]

The formal presentation and behavior of the audience, though, is a recent development. In and before the 1800s, audiences were closer to what you'd expect at a modern jazz club setting, socializing, applauding bits they liked during the performance, generally ignoring things altogether, booing, trying to pick up one another for amorous experiences, etc. The longer running times, too, is a more modern idea. Many, many pieces are just a minute or few minutes long--exactly like the pop music of today. (Think of Chopin's etudes, impromptus, etc.) The ability to read and write is at least historically true--but, remember, they were unable to record and play back music. There was no other way to preserve it.

[Wirestone]

I knew the duration thing would get me in trouble.

Yes, the tradition definitely includes shorter pieces. But Chopin also wrote piano concertos and sonatas of longer length. (And those shorter etudes, etc., are often played in sequence.) Going at least back to Bach, you have composers self-consciously creating extended works. This is made possible, in part, because of the notation mentioned earlier.

I consider notation is more important than you suggest. Many of the technical developments in the music were possible because composers were able to express them in a compact and comprehensible form. Notation provided a visual and exact record. You can't easily reproduce Sgt. Pepper's in concert. You can call up some trained musicians and play Beethoven's Fifth.

As for audience and performance practices, those may be relatively recent developments, but they are how that music is represented and performed today. They are how that music is understood, and certainly the way in which current classical composers and performers understand it (even as some -- Reich and Glass, for example -- reject it by forming their own electro-acoustic touring ensembles). It's just a way that I personally would link those disparate styles and eras together.

[the captain]

Don't let my notation comment throw you: I believe it is very important. Not essential to music, but hugely important, just as the written word is to storytelling. As for durations, though, I do disagree. Music has always included short and long programs. And as for how it is understood today: well, that's the whole issue, isn't it? If we're going by how it is understood today, your definition may as well include "dead, boring, stiff, and for white men only."

[the captain]

Here's an interesting-to-me (off the cuff) definition of what is commonly called classical music: music that people could afford to have someone notate and distribute. Granted, that definition stops as soon as people began recording music, as well as when people could realistically write and distribute their own music (so, say, the past 100 years is out). But hey, wasn't it dead by then anyway?  And what that definition does is remove the music we no longer have. Whose music was that? Commers' music. Folk music, more or less, unless it was made into classical music a la Bartok, among others.

[Ganz Allein]

The same things that I enjoy in pop/rock music are mostly the same things that turn me on in Classical music.  I tend to favor stuff that's melodically strong/unique and harmonically interesting (which is the main reason I'm a big BBs and Brian fan).  With that said, I like Tchaikovsky's "picturesque" pieces like "Nutcracker Suite" and "Swan Lake."  Also, "Tres Gymnopedes" by Erik Satie.  I favor the piano over the orchestral instruments (there's Brian again), and I like Beethoven's works for piano much better than Mozart's - they're less predictable and more haunting.  Also love Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue.  I'm not much of a Baroque era fan, but Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" is nice - especially when Sarah Chang is the soloist ;-)  Never could get much into the more atonal stuff - Bartok, Schoenberg, Weber etc.

[donald]

My tastes tend toward the symphony in C Minus by Humankowsky or the Mofosky Suite.  Dumborsky's Pathetique is especially poignant.

[The Heartical Don]